OCLC Partner Programs

OCLC is a global library cooperative representing 70,000+ institutions in more than 170 countries. On behalf of the cooperative, OCLC manages WorldCat, the largest, most authoritative and most consulted bibliographic database in the library industry.

Creating value for you and your customers

OCLC partners with hundreds of the leading publishers and application service providers in the information industry through the following partner programs.

What our partners are saying

“Libraries' situations vary so greatly that the over-arching need is for options and customization. [Our OCLC] partnership allows libraries using WorldCat Local and OCLC WorldShare Management Services to customize the approach to discovery and collection utilization for their institutions, while exposing an even broader array of content available via EDS.”Tim Collins President of EBSCO Publishing

“This collaboration improves the user experience by streamlining the research process and improving search comprehensiveness. The information world becomes more complex every day and we feel that user innovations will require cooperation among library service providers. We're delighted to work with OCLC to make this happen.”Kurt Sanford ProQuest CEO

“WorldCat provides us with a great way to send people to the library for books they want. It gives us really great coverage...you almost never see a book on Goodreads that can't be found in WorldCat. The service works well with our site and is easy for our members, too, being able to click right through to libraries.”Patrick Brown Director of Community at Goodreads

“Discoverability of our products is critical to serving the needs of our end users. We're excited to work with OCLC and expand access to our content for users around the world.”Frank Menchaca Executive Vice President, Research Solutions Cengage Learning

“OCLC has been enormously helpful during our first year of operation, streamlining access to library holdings through its WorldCat API. Our strategic partnership builds on that foundation and broadens the scope of our collaboration, enabling SCS to develop an innovative collection analytics application. [We] look forward to exploring the full potential of the OCLC WorldShare Platform.”Rick Lugg President of Sustainable Collection Services

Record creation and metadata services

OCLC is the leading authority on library data and metadata creation. Learn how to license WorldCat data and outsource your cataloging needs, including record delivery to your customers.

Metadata Services for Publishers

Get more value from your content through the Metadata Services for Publishers program. OCLC will enrich your title data with WorldCat metadata elements, including subject headings, name authorities, and control numbers. Jobs can be completed in as few as three days.

Custom Data Feeds

Aggregating bibliographic data is time-consuming and ties up your development resources. If you are looking to license a large number of bibliographic records, OCLC will work with you to understand your needs and to issue your custom quote.

Discovery and syndication services

OCLC’s syndication program is designed to drive traffic back to the content that OCLC libraries purchase or license, which supports your bottom line. Here’s how it works.

1) Content registration

Register the content that you sell to libraries with OCLC, including:

Descriptive data (title, author, etc.)

Linking data (for e-content)

Holdings data (what libraries buy)

2) Syndication

Your content will get greater visibility, reach and usage within:

OCLC applications

Library OPACs and discovery engines

Third-party applications

3) Usage reports

OCLC will produce monthly usage reports tracking:

Visibility of your content

Volume of usage

End users' applications

OCLC can process your discovery and holdings data from just about any format. OCLC can also accommodate different business models for e-content—e.g. PDA or DDA—so that you can get the most out of syndication. Find out how easy it is to join the program.

APIs and web services

Whether your business is serving libraries or end users, integrate a wealth of library data into your application quickly and easily through OCLC's APIs and web services. OCLC organizes its web services into three broad areas: Discovery and delivery, WorldShare Management Services and other OCLC services.

Discovery and delivery APIs

The WorldCat Search API helps your end users find books, movies and music available from thousands of library collections. The WorldCat KB and Article Exchange APIs direct end users to full text content available through their libraries.

Metadata services APIs

OCLC offers a range of metadata APIs that help you find and retrieve specific types of data from a record, including identifiers, subject headings and authority names—metadata that you can use to enhance or transform your own data.

Marketplace

OCLC’s Marketplace program provides a marketplace for publishers, retailers and content providers to generate sales to libraries and library patrons through OCLC applications, including:

WorldShare Management Services

Sell your content to hundreds of libraries that have deployed WMS–OCLC’s cloud-based management service–by participating in the Marketplace program. WMS libraries will be able to purchase content through the WMS acquisitions module.

WorldShare ILL

WorldShare ILL is the largest interlibrary loan network in the industry with over 8,000 participating institutions sharing and purchasing content for their patrons. Content providers that offer article-level content or short-term loan content can reach these libraries and increase sales through the Marketplace program.

WorldCat.org

Sell content directly to consumers through OCLC’s WorldCat.org service. WorldCat.org generates 13 million page views a month from 2 million unique users. Make your content available as a purchase option to these users.

You control what content you want to make available and in which OCLC applications you expose your content. Contact OCLC to find out how to join the Marketplace program.

Contact OCLC

Publishers, library service vendors and consumer web services all work with OCLC to increase sales, improve information services, save on infrastructure costs and get access to high-quality library data. If your organization would benefit from a similar partnership with OCLC, we’d love to hear from you.

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Partnership news

A group of professionals from libraries, content providers and OCLC have published Success Strategies for Electronic Content Discovery and Access, a white paper that identifies data quality issues in the content supply chain and offers practical reco...

OCLC and Elsevier, a leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, are working together to automate the process to keep e-book and e-journal holdings from ScienceDirect, Elsevier's full-text platform for res...

OCLC and NetAdvance are working together to add metadata from the JapanKnowledge and JK Books collections to WorldCat, the world’s most comprehensive online catalog of library resources, increasing discovery and access to these rich Japanese-language...